Adam's Blogroll: click through to the author's blog
Two journals have retracted papers by a biologist who was recently found guilty of misconduct by his former employer, the University of Colorado Denver, bringing the total to five. The investigation report by UC Denver, which we obtained earlier this year via a public records request, had recommended one of the two newest retractions, which […]
The post Two more retractions for former US prof who altered dozens of images appeared first on Retraction Watch.
Posted by in behind a paywall, duplication retractions, faked data, freely available, gastroenterology, hepatology, image manipulation, immunology retractions, journal of immunology retractions, misconduct investigations, molecular biology, society journal retractions, united states, wiley, wiley retractions
In 2014, a journal contacted researcher Denis Rousseau about one of his papers that had just been published online ahead of print, raising some concerns. According to Rousseau, he sent the journal a corrected figure “almost immediately,” which he believed addressed the issue. Rousseau, a cell biologist at the University Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France, said he then contacted the journal many […]
The post Author objects to retraction after he says journal ignored his queries for three years appeared first on Retraction Watch.
A pair of stem cell researchers have earned two corrections, the result of images that were mislabeled, distorted, or compiled incorrectly, according to the notices. Kang Cheng prepared the gels when he was a research fellow in last author Sanjeev Gupta‘s lab at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Gupta told us he reviewed the original gels, and the errors didn’t affect the […]
The post Stem cell researchers fix two papers following PubPeer comments appeared first on Retraction Watch.
A study on chronic liver inflammation was pulled from the journal Hepatology because of “insufficient permission by the authors’ funding institution to submit and publish the manuscript.” The paper, which was published in July, looked into how steatosis, the abnormal retention of fat in the liver, turns into steatohepatitis, also known as fatty liver disease. Researchers […]
The post “Insufficient permission” from funder resects liver disease paper appeared first on Retraction Watch.
Posted by in corrections, hepatology, mega-corrections, united states, wiley
The liver is the only internal organ that can regenerate. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Egyptian researchers tried to publish the same paper about liver ischemia twice in different journals. They succeeded — for a little while, at least.
The Journal of Molecular Histology is retracting the second of the articles to appear. Titled “Effect of preischemic treatment with fenofibrate, a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α ligand, on hepatic ischemia–reperfusion injury in rats,” (which is still available online) it was published in 2011 by Vivian Boshra and Amal M. Moustafa of Mansoura University.
Trouble was, in 2011 Moustafa and Boshra, in that order, had also published “Effect of fenofibrate on the experimentally induced hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury in rats: biochemical, light, and electron microscopic studies” in the Egyptian Journal of Histology (link to pdf).
That, as we know, is not done.
As the retraction notice states:
The article has been retracted due to duplicate publication. It was first published by the same authors as “Effect of fenofibrate on the experimentally induced hepatic schema/reperfusion injury in rats: biochemical, light, and electronic microscopic studies” in the Egyptian Journal of Histology, volume 34 (pages 103–116).
The now-retracted version has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, which does not appear to index the Egyptian journal.
Pharmaceutical Biology has retracted a 2012 paper by a group of liver researchers from China after the discovery of an error that evidently invalidated the results in the paper.
The article, “Antifibrotic effects of protocatechuic aldehyde on experimental liver fibrosis,” purported to show that
protocatechuic aldehyde, the major degradation of phenolic acids … has potentially conferring antifibrogenic effects.
The editors and publisher would like to inform readers the following article has been retracted from publication in Pharmaceutical Biology:
Li CM, Jiang WL, Zhu HB, Hou J. Antifibrotic effects of protocatechuic aldehyde on experimental liver fibrosis. Pharm Biol. 2012; 50(4): 413–419. (doi: 10.3109/13880209.2011.608193).
Following publication of this article, an error has been identified and upon further investigation of the effects of protocatechuic aldehyde on liver fibrosis, the results indicated protocatechuic aldehyde has no significant effect on liver fibrosis.
The authors have been fully co-operative and offer their sincerest apologies to the readers and the publishers of the Pharmaceutical Biology article and accept the retraction of this paper.
Pharmaceutical Biology published this article in good faith, and on the basis of signed statements of the corresponding author regarding the originality and ethical reliability of their work. The article is withdrawn from all print and electronic editions.
The retraction count continues to grow for a group of Iranian scientists who appear to have published similar work four times.
The group was forced to retract a Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases paper in March. That retraction came alongside one in the New Zealand Journal of Medical Laboratory Science, whose editor had tipped JGLD editor Monica Acalovschi — who has taken a tough stance on duplication in her own journal, published in Romania — off to the duplication. Acalovschi, in turn, tipped off Biochemia Medica, the journal of Croatian Society of Medical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine, which has now retracted a 2009 paper by the group.
The Biochemia Medica retraction, published in its June 2012 issue, says:
It has been recently brought to the Editor-in-chief’s attention by Monica Acalovschi, who is the Editor-in-chief of the Journal Gastrointestinal Liver Diseases that Hadi Parsian has since 2009 published three articles with close similarities:
1. Parsian H, Rahimipour A, Nouri M, Somi MH, Qujeq D, Fard MK, Agcheli K. Serum hyaluronic acid and laminin as biomarkers in liver fibrosis. J Gastrointestin Liver Dis. 2010;19(2):169-74.
2. Parsian H, Rahimipour A, Nouri M, Somi MH, Qujeq D. Assessment of liver fibrosis development in chronic hepatitis B patients by serum hyaluronic acid and laminin levels. Acta Clin Croat. 2010;49(3):257-65.
3. Parsian H et al. Relationship between serum hyaluronic acid level and stage of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis. Biochemia Medica 2009;19(2):154-65.Authors have submitted their work to Biochemia Medica along with a cover letter clearly stating that their manuscript is original, has not been published before and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.
Unfortunately, after thourough investigation we conclude that all three published articles have close similarities and high degree of homology. They originate from the same investigation, they report same results on the same patients. This is considered as self-plagiarism and serious publication misconduct.
Article published in the Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases in June 2010, has been retracted this March.
Due to the above stated reasons, we therefore retract the article published in Biochemia Medica. The authors have been informed about the reasons for the retraction decision.
So it appears that the authors first published similar data in two journals in 2009 — Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases and New Zealand Journal of Medical Laboratory Science – both of which have been retracted. They since published some of the same data in the two Croatian journals (Biochemia Medica and Acta Clinica Croatica), one of which has also been retracted.
When I discovered the Biochemia Medica retraction notice, at SpotOn London’s session on research fraud earlier this week, the paper was still fully available at the journal website and in the Croatian journal database HrcakSrce, unmarked as retracted in both. It’s been seen almost 400 times and downloaded over 140 times at HrcakSrce.
The editor of the journal, Ana-Maria Simundic, told me by e-mail that was a “severe omission” and has promised to immediately take the article down from both sites.
The authors’ Acta Clinica Croatica study has yet to be retracted, and that journal’s editor has not responded to requests for comment. Simundic says the journal’s editorial board has not responded to her either.
We’ve also emailed the corresponding authors, and will update with anything we learn.
